Government gives £50m boost to Tate Modern expansion

How the new adjoining building at the Tate Modern may look when complete. Photograph: PA

The Tate has been given an exceptional £50m grant from the government towards the huge expansion of Tate Modern in time for the 2012 Olympics, it was announced yesterday.

A government grant of this type and size is unusual: the last such was made towards the building of the British Library in 1998. According to James Purnell, the secretary of state for culture, media and sport, he and his predecessor, Tessa Jowell, had argued strongly to the Treasury for the special grant.

He called Tate Modern "the defining project of the millennium - of the successful ones, anyway" and said the Tate was the leading exhibitor of modern art in the world.

"When you have something that's genuinely world class you don't need to hold back in supporting it because of its excellence."

He added that the Olympics was the ideal opportunity to change outmoded perceptions of Britain internationally.

The £50m will go towards a budget of £215m for the expanded museum. The government boost, said Purnell, should "act as a firm symbol of the government's commitment to this amazing project and help draw in funds from other sources".

Sir Nicholas Serota, director of the Tate, said the remaining money was being sought largely from private sources. He did not rule out turning to the lottery, though he added: "We had lottery money in the first phase of our development, and obviously that is in shorter supply now than it was in the 1990s. But I am sure we will want to talk to the lottery about what will be a huge, popular scheme."

He said he hoped that money would be raised rapidly enough to allow building to begin in 2009, so that work is completed in 2012.

The building, designed by architects Herzog & de Meuron, will spring up out of the currently disused side of the existing Tate Modern building. Planning permission was received for the venture last summer.

Using the former Bankside power station's cavernous old oil tanks as a basis, the architects envisage a spectacular aggregration of corkscrewing "boxes" rising high out the south side of the site. In essence, the visitor who enters Tate Modern via the ramp entrance into the Turbine Hall will be able to turn right, as well as left, as they are obliged to do at present. Exhibition space will be increased from 9,000 to 15,000 square metres; that does not include the Turbine Hall, which adds 5,000 square metres. Even so, said Serota, the exhibition space will still be just less than that in Tate Modern's main international competitors, the Pompidou Centre in Paris and the Museum of Modern Art, New York.

Serota said the expansion will mean that many works that spend much of their lives in storage will be on display more often.

Purnell referred to his memories of admiring the Rothko Seagram murals in the former Tate Gallery on Millbank; Serota said he wanted the younger generation visiting Tate Modern to establish similar relationships with newer works - to remember, as well as the Rothko room, a putative Cornelia Parker room or Bruce Nauman room.

At present, over a two-year period, 40% to 50% of the Tate's holdings are kept in storage. The expansion will also mean improved education facilities and opportunities to stage performance work and show film.

A government spokesman confirmed that the £50m grant would not be at the expense of other cultural organisations. It was a "separate and unique project".

Further capital grants to museums for the next three years are announced today. The amount, not including the Tate grant, represents an 80% increase over the past three years.

Tate Modern is the second most visited tourist attraction in the country, after Blackpool Pleasure Beach. After the mass appeal of Carsten Höller's helterskelters, the current Turbine Hall installation, Doris Salcedo's Shibboleth, has attracted almost as many visitors.